Bikepacking is a way to travel in which people, as the name suggests, move by bike from place to place. Only the most necessary things are taken and carried on the bike. Different from the traditional bike touring, bikepackers pack very light and rather go far and explore the backcountry rather than big paved roads. They often sleep in tents camping along the way.

For Sara Hallbauer this new form of travelling by bike is inspiring. She is a professional cyclist who competes in ultracycling races that go over several thousand kilometers and writes a blog about her biking adventures. Her parents used to travel by bike with heavy bags and lots of stuff.

“Bikepacking nowadays is reduced to the minimum of things. That´s what I like about bikepacking so much.”

Sara Hallbauer

It is a trend that has become more and more popular in the last years and keeps attracting more people. “We can just watch it grow” says Birger Kjærbye who owns the bike shop and rental place onewaybiketours. He reports that his rental place that rents bikes to tourists especially for the purpose of bikepacking has a net growth of around 20 to 30 per cent per year. “It´s the nature of bikepacking. Everybody can do it.”

Also Jesper Pørksen who works for cykelturisme.dk sees the number of bikepackers in Denmark growing. According to him there are 1.7 million people a year that go on holiday in Denmark with cycling as their main motive. Most of them stay in one place and then go on tours from there. He estimates the number of bikepackers around five per cent of these 1.7 million, so even less than 100.000 people annually. So even though bikepacking is a growing trend, it is still very niche.

“Travelling by bike is something that we highly encourage. It is a sustainable way of transportation and also affordable for a lot of people” says Lea Weber, spokesperson for visitdenmark.com, the official Danish tourism website. She further states that she and her colleagues especially promote cycling holidays to German and Dutch tourists as they are most interested to use a bike on their holidays in Denmark. After the Danish, the Germans are the second biggest group going on cycling holidays in Denmark with 40 per cent according to the “Cykelturismen i vækst” report.